Our guest house was only a few minutes’ drive from the entrance to the park, and a safari truck came to collect all 17 of us at about 5.45am. By then we’d showered, dressed, packed and had a first, light breakfast.
We were in the park pretty much on the dot of 6.00am, as it opened. Our driver was excellent: she provided just the right amount of commentary when we stopped to observe the animals. (She told us, for example, how the zebra graze alongside two particular kinds of deer, for mutual protection from the lion, because the zebra has an acute sense of sight, but doesn’t hear or smell so well and these deer have acute senses of hearing and smell, but don’t see so well.)
Over the course of the next three hours, we saw some wonderful things: four white rhino early on, ambling beside (and in fact
straying onto) the road we were driving along; more giraffe, zebra, springbok and wildebeest than you could count; warthogs and hippos; and then wonderfully, towards the end our the drive, three lions (a richly maned maled and two sleek females). They weren’t very close to us, perhaps 150 yards away, but we had them in sight on and off for 10-15 minutes, and with binoculars you could see them perfectly clearly. We had seen no elephants, which seemed odd to me (I’d seen plenty in the same park a year ago), but we’d found two of the Big Five and much else besides.
At 9.00am we returned to our guest house for a fuller, second breakfast. By this time our friends had seen enough for one day. They had all visited Pilanesberg many times before (though not all had experienced a guided tour), and knew that they would be able return pretty much at leisure. So, bar Pappy, our driver, they settled down to a relaxed morning together, while we, from Lichfield, got into our own minibus for a second helping.
The day was warming up, of course, which tends to drive the animals into the shade. They are most visible when they’re on the move, and in the middle of the day they move much less. But I was still hopeful we would at least find some elephants. Incredibly, we didn’t. Nor did anyone else we spoke to among our fellow visitors. As we left, bemoaning our misfortune to the gatekeeper at the exit, she observed that everyone was leaving disappointed that day. It wasn’t clear whether for some reason (disease? commercial interest?), the elephants had been removed from the park at present; or whether all 200+ had simply congregated in some remote and inaccessible part of the place.
But we did find plenty to enjoy, including buffalo (our third sighting among the ‘Big Five’). We found two large families of hippo – and this being South Africa’s spring, they had babies with them. There isn’t much which is cuter than an infant hippo. We saw young zebra too, which was also lovely. There were exotic birds and a baboon or two.
We could have spent the whole day there without any trouble at all. But we were due for an evening meal at the Bishop’s House in Klerksdorp, several hours’ drive away. So we reluctantly gave up on the elephant hunt at about 1.30, and headed back to the guesthouse via a brief stop at a trading stall to do some haggling.
Our Ikageng friends had attempted to cook up a surprise for us. They knew of a lion park just south of Sun City, on our route, where they had taken their own families on previous visits to Pilanesberg, and where they had not only been able to see grown lions up close, but had been able to pet cubs, and be photographed holding them. They hadn’t told us about it, but simply drove to the place – only to find that it had closed in February this year. ‘We wanted to surprise you’, Peter commented memorably, ‘but we have only surprised ourselves’.
We stopped for a late, late lunch at a burger bar, and arrived at the Bishop’s House in Klerksdorp at about 6.30pm. Bishop Stephen himself was at the ‘braai’ (pronounced ‘brigh’). Again there was a surprise for us: all the adults we have got to know this week were assembled. Our hosts were all there (in two cases, we hadn’t expected to see them), and others who have contributed to our hospitality during the visit. It made for a lovely ‘farewell’ occasion. Bishop Stephen said some kind words about our visit before we ate, and about the importance of the partnership between our two Dioceses. He urged us to visit again (‘our hands and our homes are open to you’, he said), and urged me to bring a bigger group for a longer stay next time! I was able to say how much the visit meant to us and how grateful we were to all of them, how intense and therefore transforming the experience had been for us all, and how hard we would be trying to tell the story of what we’d seen and heard when we got home. Edward, the Dean, added some further words, and then the Bishop invited others in our group to speak. Ed and Helen acted as representatives of us all and spoke movingly about what the visit had meant to them. There were enough tears flowing by the end of that round of speeches to suggest that the goodbyes today, Friday, could be distressing. But who would wish it to be otherwise?
The food was wonderful, and in the African way, we didn’t hurry. But by 9.00pm it was time for us to leave, as Klerksdorp is 40 minutes or so from Potch and Ikageng. Helen and Amelia went directly with Raini; but the rest of us got back into the van and were dropped off in turns. We were all safely ‘home’ again for our last night with our hosts by 10pm.
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